


A Patchwork Family: Acceptance

by Lbilover



Series: A Patchwork Family Series [8]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Acceptance, Family Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9351998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lbilover/pseuds/Lbilover
Summary: Sam sets matters straight with his father.





	

_Late Winterfilth, 1420_

Gaffer Gamgee sat on a bench in the front garden of Number 3, Bagshot Row, his face tilted up to the sky. It was another unusually clear sunny day for late October; almost as if nature was still trying to make up for all that had happened to folk during the Troubles.

He welcomed the sun’s warmth on his face and hands. His body increasingly creaked and protested like a rusty hinge, especially in the morning, and that despite the oils and salves Sam and the Widow pressed on him every time he turned around- or so it seemed. _I’m sluggish as one of them garden snakes that can’t start moving until the sun warms it up_ , the Gaffer thought ruefully. He wasn’t looking forward to this winter nohow, despite the snugness of his new brick-lined smial. 

_As I was a-walking one morning by chance;_  
_I heard a maid making her moan,_  
_I asked why she sighed, and she sadly replied_  
_'Alas! I must live all alone, alone,_  
_Alas! I must live all alone.'_

The sound of whistling floating on the breeze diverted his attention from the vexatious topic of his aging joints. It was Sam, coming down from Bag End as he did each day to check on the Gaffer and tend to such chores as needed doing about the hole. But his son didn’t sound like no skylark today; no, the tune he whistled was a sad one and old as the hills. And the Gaffer knew why he’d chosen it: it was on account of Mr. Frodo, gone these three days to Great Smials to visit his aunt, who’d been taken ill. Sam had not gone with him, but stayed behind to oversee some repair work being done at Bag End.

Suddenly fretful, the Gaffer pleated the edge of his brown wool jumper between his gnarled fingers. He didn’t like to think on the reason for Sam’s sorrow or, indeed, on the relationship between Sam and Mr. Frodo since they’d returned home. There was gossip aplenty in the _Ivy Bush_ , that was a fact, and folk asking awkward questions he didn’t rightly know how to answer. Not that such things were unheard of, o’course, especially among the younger hobbits- blowing off steam, as it were, while they grew old enough to court a lass- but his Sam and Mr. Frodo? 

_I said, 'My fair maid, pray whence have you strayed?_  
_And are you some distance from home?'_  
_'My home,' replied she, 'is a burden to me,_  
_For there I must live all alone, alone,_  
_For there I must live all alone._

Unwillingly, the Gaffer’s mind returned to an evening in April when he’d decided to take a turn along the Row, the weather being especially fine. Sam had only just moved into Bag End, with the Gaffer’s blessing: for he’d thought Mr. Frodo badly in need of care, so pale and quiet seeming as he was ever since returning from his travels. But he’d had no notion what Sam’s removal there really meant, and never had Hamfast Gamgee received such a shock in his life as when he spied his son and the Master of Bag End strolling hand-in-hand up the lane, looking for all the world like a courting couple: heads close together and shoulders touching. As if that wasn’t enough to dumbfound him, they’d stopped and embraced- right there in the middle of the lane! And there was no mistaking the kind of embrace it was, neither, with their bodies straining together, and Mr. Frodo’s hands all tangled up in Sam’s hair. The Gaffer had crept away, quiet as you please, and tried to put it out of his mind. He’d never spoke of it to no one, least of all Sam. 

_When I was eleven, sweethearts I had seven,_  
_And then I would look upon none;_  
_But now all in vain I must sigh and complain,_  
_For my true love has left me alone, alone,_  
_For my true love has left me alone._

The whistling grew closer; the Gaffer fixed his faded eyes on the upright figure of his son, striding into view down the Row.

An odd sort of feeling crept over the Gaffer whenever he looked at his son these days. He’d never admit it to Sam, for it wasn’t a parent’s job to go a-praising his children and giving them cause to get swell-headed, but it felt very much like pride. Sam had changed during the months he’d been away in foreign parts. There was no doubting it: he’d grown. 

Oh, not like Mr. Meriadoc and Mr. Peregrin, so tall and grand as they were, a-singing and laughing all the day long, but Sam was a hobbit folk listened to, and went to for advice. He wasn’t afraid to express his opinion neither, or disagree- even with his own father. Always polite, o’course, the way he’d been raised to be, but firm withal. 

Sam even carried himself different now. He’d abandoned that ironmongery he’d returned home wearing, but still looked like a hobbit who was accustomed to carrying a sword and who knew how to use one. Then there were those rare occasions when Sam wore that beautiful grey cloak with the brooch shaped like a leaf- made by the Elves, Sam had told him, and his father had fingered the subtle weave and texture of the fabric with awe. The Gaffer never would have believed a Gamgee could own or wear something so fine and not look out-of-place or like he was aping his betters. But it appeared that there was now one Gamgee who could. 

Aye, Sam had grown.

“Morning, dad,” said Sam as he came up. He was pitching his voice a little louder these days so that his father could hear him; his deafness was getting worse, the Gaffer acknowledged, though he’d no need for an ear trumpet as he’d informed the Widow indignantly when she’d suggested it the other morning. “How are you keeping today?”

“I’m well, Samwise, right well.”

Sam studied him in that thoughtful way he had, as though testing the truth of the Gaffer’s words. Then he nodded, satisfied. “I thought I’d chop you some more firewood, dad. I reckon we’ll have a mild enough winter, but I don’t want you to run short.” 

“T’ain’t necessary, Sam,” the Gaffer protested. “That woodpile’s so tall, an oliphaunt couldn’t see over top of it.” Sam grinned; though the Gaffer still had trouble believing it, Sam swore he’d actually seen an oliphaunt with his very own eyes. “Sit you down, son, and keep an old hobbit company. T’ain’t often we’ve time for a good natter these days.” _Not since you moved into Bag End with Mr. Frodo leastways._

“All right,” Sam agreed at once, as though glad of the reprieve, and sank down onto the bench beside his father with a small sigh.

Sam looked tired and out of sorts, like he’d not been sleeping well, the Gaffer thought, studying his son’s face as he had just been studied. The lad had looked that way a few weeks back, when there’d been some kind of trouble between him and Mr. Frodo, and that queer story about Mr. Frodo’s dog, Huan, had gone round the neighborhood like wildfire. 

The Gaffer’d not credited the tale at first: there wasn’t no dog living smart enough to dash about the countryside that way, fetching help for his fallen master from the _Green Dragon_ and standing guard over him. But Sam himself had confirmed it, and there was no doubting he’d been telling the truth. Nor was there any doubting that whatever had been amiss between him and Frodo Baggins was now a thing of the past. Why, Sam had looked like a lamp was lit up inside him as he sat in the kitchen at Number Three and told his father the fantastical tale. All aglow he’d been, and happier than his father could ever remember seeing him. And that was saying something, for a sunnier natured, happier child than Sam Gamgee could not have been imagined. 

“Chimney work done, is it?” The Gaffer asked after a moment, shying away from the memory of how Sam had spoke Mr. Frodo’s name, so soft and prayerful.

“Aye.” Sam was leaning forward, elbows on knees, methodically filling his pipe with shreds of fragrant leaf from a leather pouch he’d taken from his jacket pocket. “All done, and good as new.” He heaved another sigh. “Couldn’t have been a worse time for that branch to fall, though, and knock the chimney down,” he added glumly.

“I reckon you’re over hard to please, Samwise, if you can call this fine weather without a drop of rain a bad time,” the Gaffer chided, for the repairs had gone apace.

“It ain’t that, dad. It’s Frodo. I could have gone with him to Great Smials otherwise.” Sam gazed intently southward across the fields in the direction of Tuckborough, almost as if he thought he could will himself there.

“Ain’t Mr. Frodo a growed hobbit and capable of riding to Tookland on his own?” the Gaffer asked, deliberately misunderstanding; the longing and loneliness on his Sam’s face was plain as the nose on his face, and made him uncomfortable. “He don’t need you to nursemaid him.”

“No, he don’t,” agreed Sam, and a smile lit his face, easing the lines of weariness like magic. “Frodo’s well again, dad, truly well.” 

There it was again: that softness in Sam’s voice as he spoke Mr. Frodo’s name. “And right glad I am to hear it,” the Gaffer replied, sounding querulous even to his own ears. “For Mr. Frodo won’t be needing you up at Bag End full-time no more, will he, and you can start looking around for a hole of your own.” 

Sam abandoned his pipe lighting and sat up, staring at his father in round-eyed astonishment. “Dad…” he began, but the Gaffer hurried on, “You’ll be thinking of marriage one of these days, Samwise, and starting a family. Best you get yourself settled as soon as may be. It was right kind of you to do for Mr. Frodo while he was setting Bag End back to rights, but time’s a-wasting. You don’t want all the unwed lasses to go fixing their interest someplace else.”

“ _Dad_.” Sam spoke quietly but firmly. “I thought you understood how it is between me and Frodo, but maybe I was mistaken. If so, well, I reckon it’s time I set matters straight.”

The Gaffer found his gaze trapped by a pair of resolute brown eyes, Bell’s eyes, and he could no more look away than he could in the old days, when Sam’s mother had set her mind to telling him a home truth or two. His heart began to thud painfully in his chest, and his hands to tremble on his lap. _I ought to have kept silent_ , he thought in a sudden panic.

”I ain’t fixing to leave Bag End, dad.” Sam spoke the words the Gaffer had been dreading to hear. “Not ever: it’s my home now. I love Frodo, see.” 

“’Course you do.” The Gaffer clung stubbornly to the last remnants of hope. “Mr. Frodo’s your master, as Mr. Bilbo was mine, and it’s only right as you should love him.”

“Frodo ain’t my master no more, dad, and that ain’t how I love him neither.” Sam’s voice gentled; he could see the Gaffer’s distress. But he didn’t relent, this once biddable Samwise who had gone off to foreign parts and come back so changed. “I love him like… well, like a sweetheart loves, you could say.” Then he added a bit shyly, as though still unable to credit the truth of it, “And that’s how he loves me.”

The Gaffer shook his head in instinctive and vehement repudiation of Sam’s words, though the image of that embrace last April was blazoned in his mind. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam continued softly. “I know it ain’t what you’d planned for me, and it grieves me to disappoint you.”

The word ‘but’ hung quivering in the air between them.

“Was this- this-" the Gaffer’s throat caught on the word ‘love’, “ _feeling_ betwixt you both afore you left home with Mr. Frodo?”

“Nay, it was never in my mind nor in his, not then.”

“Then maybe the feeling is only temporary-like, Sam, and in time you’ll see sense.”

“My _love_ for Frodo ain’t temporary,” Sam replied, a combative spark lighting his eyes. “And I don’t want to see ‘sense’, if by it you mean that Frodo and me should be apart. Did you feel that way about mam, like you’d see sense in time and not love her no more?” 

Nettled by the comparison with his Bell, the Gaffer grew testy. “Mr. Frodo ain’t no female,” he declared bluntly, “and he can’t bear you no babies, Sam. And that dog he dotes on may be cleverer than most, but he’s only a dog when all’s said and done, and not a child you can raise up to follow in your footsteps.”

It was Sam’s turn to be nettled. “I don’t want Huan to be no child, and I don’t want Frodo to be anything but what he is: the bravest and wisest and best hobbit who ever lived. Frodo gave up more than his finger, dad, to save the Shire, and didn’t ask no reward or notice for it, and little enough honour does he ever get from them as owe him _everything_. I love him, and I mean to see to it that he don’t never suffer pain or hunger or hurt again. And I won’t allow no one, not even you, to say one word against him.”

The Gaffer stared open-mouthed at his son. He looked almost like a stranger, with his set face and fierce, uncompromising eyes. “I wasn’t trying to say nothing against Mr. Frodo. I’ve allus liked him, ever since he was a lad and came here to live with Mr. Bilbo. But Sam,” he added, feeling the full weight of his many years, “’tis only natural that your father should want to see you settled and happy, like your brothers and sisters.”

“With a wife and little ‘uns, you mean? But I don’t have to be settled in the same exact way as Mari or Hal or Daisy to be happy. I learned a lot of things while I was away, dad, and one of them is that there ain’t no one right way to live, no matter what anyone in the Shire might think. Me and Frodo and Huan are a family now, and I don’t have no regrets.”

The Gaffer had never before heard his son sound just that way: proud and confident. He startled a little as Sam reached over and set his hand atop his father’s. “Dad,” he continued, leaning forward earnestly as he had when he was a child and wanted permission to go up to Bag End to visit Mr. Bilbo and listen to his tales, “won’t you try and understand how it is for me and Frodo, and be a little happy for us?”

 _’tis only natural that your father should want to see you settled and happy…_ His words of a moment ago came back to the Gaffer. Could he ask for a better son than Sam had been, or be prouder of the hobbit he’d grown into? Sam had made his choice, and knew his own mind. Maybe it was time to accept that it wouldn’t be changed, and that Sam truly was settled and happy.

He set his other hand over Sam’s, and nodded, blinking a little; the sun was that strong, it made his eyes water. Father and son sat together in comfortable silence for a time, and listened to the birds singing in the hedgerows.

But after a while, the Gaffer spoke up with energy; he’d come to a decision, and didn’t intend to shilly-shally. “Well, Sam, I’m right surprised at you,” he declared, “All this sitting about moping and sighing, when you could be riding after Mr. Frodo this very minute as is. I don’t doubt it’d cheer him mightily to see your face. Though,” he added, shaking his head, “what he sees in your plain Gamgee mug to cheer him is a mystery to me.”

Sam looked at him, thunderstruck. The idea had obviously never occurred to him.

“Well, go on, Sam. What are you waiting for? You don’t need my permission no more, that’s clear.” The Gaffer made a little shooing motion with his hands.

Sam threw his arms around his father and hugged him. “Thank you, dad,” he whispered in a choked voice.

“Well,” the Gaffer murmured, patting Sam awkwardly on the back. “I reckon your old dad can see through a brick wall in time.” It was as much of a blessing as he was able to bestow then, and Sam knew it. With one final hug, Sam was off at a flat run, back to Bag End, leaving his pipe behind on the bench.

The Gaffer picked up the pipe and cradled it in his hands, and sighed a little for a parent’s lost dreams, and for children who grew up and took their own road. But he thought that Bell would approve his actions, and perhaps having Mr. Frodo for a son-in-law, so to speak, might not be such a bad thing after all.

~end~


End file.
